Why you should choose your words with care

December 17th, 2005

It's important to know and safeguard your readers' tender spots

We all make mistakes. And I just saw the director of Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Communication (pictured left) make a doozy. In a mostly thoughtful column about bias in the media that ran in today’s Globe and Mail newspaper, he began:

“Want to know what makes everyone mental about the news media?”

I just about choked on my Corn Flakes. Why would the director of a school of journalism use a word like “mental”? His picture shows him to look like a pretty buttoned-down guy, so perhaps he was hoping to sound with-it and colloquial. (Sort of like parents today who say “dude” or try to wear clothes they should rightly leave to their teenagers.) Or maybe he was hoping to avoid the formality and dullness of the academic language with which he must now be surrounded. Who knows?

All I can say is: he was wrong. It’s not smart to fool around with words like “mental” which might be taken to mean “mentally ill.” I know I risk sounding excessively politically correct when I say this, but hear me out. This is not about PC-ness. It’s about not hurting readers.

Anyone who has mental illness in his or her family (and that’s a lot of people, by the way) is going to feel a little jab to the heart on reading that sentence. I learned this many years ago as a young newspaper editor, when I carelessly let a phrase about schizophrenia slide by my editing eye. The phrase was about someone “feeling schizophrenic” – as if that were a choice! -- which is not only hurtful, but just plain wrong. And I got letters about it. Now that I’m old enough to know parents who have kids who really are schizophrenic, it makes me want to hang my head in shame.

I also have a friend, with an adopted daughter, who frequently finds thoughtless and inappropriate references to adoption in the newspaper. She sometimes writes letters about the worst of them, but mainly she just ignores them and simmers or grieves.

Over time, I’ve learned that the world is a harsh enough place on its own. Those of us who write shouldn’t make it any harsher by using language so carelessly.